Song You Need: Noname at her reflective best

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

When an artist reflects on their own shortcomings or those of the world around them, most usually choose to do so in a way that's approachable and easily consumable. This has never been of much interest to Noname, her public statements, or art. As her career progressed across three albums — Telefone, Room 25, and now Sundial, released last week — Noname showcases her inadequacies with plush jazz-rap and a unique flow that turns syllables into a Gordian Knot of love, sex, politics, and career anxieties.

Noname's method of reflection and that of one of her most popular contemporaries was apparent during a brief firestorm in 2021. J. Cole, long heralded as a rapper's rapper with a conscious heart, shared a song called "Snow on the Bluff" which criticized Noname for adopting a condescending tone in her tweets about politics and police brutality. J Cole's defensive, strangely slighted verse was criticized; Noname responded with "Song 33" and then apologized. She had allowed an outsider to dictate the terms of her reflection, a mistake she has not repeated since.

"namesake" is one of the best songs on Sundial because of how pure and vibrant Noname's contemplation is. Her first verse offers a way out of a collapsing civilization — communes built on friendship, trust, and education. Then, she analyzes why this will likely never happen with a wry smile that would make The Coup proud: it's nice to have money. Distractions like celebrity billionaires and the Super Bowl are hard to resist. Coachella, which Noname raps about playing after saying she would boycott the festival, gets a nod. A rebuttal to anyone who considers her political rap to be alienating or stuffy, "namesake" peers into the deep roots of hypocrisy in us all and looks clearly at the temptation all around. No one's immune, not even the people who can see it most clearly.